The Ichiro trade and East Coast arrogance

The Washington, D.C., creature who heads political coverage at NBC News this morning poured salt into wounds of the Ichiro trade: In the “Shameless Plug” segment that ends Daily Rundown on MSNBC, Chuck Todd intoned:

“Ichiro, now that you are playing in New York, hopefully you will get some of the recognition you deserve. Incredible career.”

In short, despite a string of All-Star appearances — and multiple magazine players — the “Sultan of Slap” will get attention now that he is playing left field in the Bronx for the New York Yankees.

It’s an attitude we get out West — except for Los Angeles — usually in more subtle shades: You don’t count. Or, more accurately, you don’t count until we say that you count.

The classic example came in the 1990’s when Newsweek decided to do a cover story on Seattle as a newly wealthy, with-it city. The cover subject chosen to make that point was Michael Kinsley, a Washington, D.C. pundit (CNN’s Crossfire) recently transplanted to Seattle.

The East Coast owns a sense of entitlement: O.K., the old ruling class has receded. Instead, elite institutions now adopt and transform talent from the hinterlands.

Our U.S. Supreme Court justices have a variety of backgrounds. What they have in common, however, is that all are graduates of the Harvard and Yale law schools. A Montana appellate judge was finalist for the Supremes’ last vacancy, but it was pointedly pointed out that he had graduated from a state university law school.

Whoever wins, the outcome of November’s election will guarantee that for 28 years, 1988 to 2016, the President of the United States will have held a degree from Harvard or Yale, sometimes more than one.

Mitt Romney has ruminated that President Obama “spent too much time at Harvard,” ignoring that fact that Mittens himself earned a law degree and an MBA at the Cambridge campus.

In sports, college football teams on the West Coast get shortchanged in weekly rankings because — the explanation is given with a straight face — they play too late Saturday afternoons and evenings for ballot casters east of the Mississippi to see their games.

I had thought, until Monday afternoon, that the West Coast had struck back gloriously over the weekend.

The Oakland A’s swept the Yankees in a four-game series with each game decided by one run. Just two players on the Yankee team, C.C. Sabathia ($24.28 million) and A. Rod ($30 million), earn more than the entire Oakland A’s payroll.